


The Crash

by RoyHankins



Series: Avamorphs (Avatar/Animorphs crossover series) [1]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Animorphs AU, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:34:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25290976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoyHankins/pseuds/RoyHankins
Summary: My name is Aang. My friends and I can't tell you too much about ourselves, we can't risk Controllers finding out who and what we really are. It all started when we saw a spaceship crash.
Series: Avamorphs (Avatar/Animorphs crossover series) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1961986
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Book cover: Aang, with shaggy brown hair and clothes too large for him, morphing into a flying lemur. The second stage looks especially freaky.
> 
> Tagline: "The truth can't be forgotten."

My name is Aang. I can’t tell you where I live, or exactly how old I am, or lots of other stuff about me. Not because I don’t trust you! I want to trust everyone. But...I have to be careful. There are Controllers everywhere, and we can’t be sure who is going to read this. If they find out who I am,  _ where _ I am...well I don’t really have any family to worry about. I do have my friends, though, and if they find us...

I’m writing this so maybe you can learn the truth. We need all the help we can get. Especially right now, when we don’t have any at all.

Sorry, I bet that was really confusing.

I’ll start at the beginning.

It was autumn, a few months after the school year started up again. I’d already stayed in the school library for as long as I could, but they closed a few hours after the last bell. It was still too early to go to where I was living, so I went to a park, near the middle of the city. Maybe it was the lingering heat, or maybe it was too late in the day, but I had the whole park to myself.

A lot of people look at me and think I’m younger than I am. I get why, though. I tend to get bored easily, which leads to me running around and trying to have fun. I spent a few hours playing around on the kid’s equipment at the park, even though most people would say I’m too old for it now. That’s never made sense to me. It isn’t like there’s an age limit on this stuff! (And if there was, I probably wouldn’t obey it anyway.)

Sadly, I have my limits. I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch, and the only way to get anything more would be to head back to ‘home’, something I’d been putting off as long as I could.

I’m an orphan, and I’ve been in the foster care system as long as I can remember. I don’t know if I’m just really unlucky, or if I just rub grown-ups the wrong way. Either way, I’ve never stayed with any one adult very long. Sometimes I was one of a bunch of kids in one house, the odd-one-out who got weird looks if I was lucky and bruises if I wasn’t. Sometimes I was the only kid, meaning whoever I was living with was able to focus on me, which usually wasn’t a good thing.

I was living with a guy named ‘Ling’, but I never learned why he’d taken me in. He didn’t hurt me, not like a lot of other people had, but he never noticed when I was there or when I wasn’t. He fed me, but it felt like he was doing the least he could, like he was fulfilling some obligation.

With no other choice, I started walking back to Ling’s house, when I saw a group of kids around my age walking down a nearby street. We all went to the same school, and I knew them all by sight.

Zuko is a few grades above me, and for a while I’d been scared of him. A lot of people were. He tends to keep to himself, aside from the few close friends I was watching him walk home with. His scar draws attention, and not the good kind. He’s also tall, close to the tallest in his class, and he’s more athletic than most of us expect him to be. He wears dark clothes, especially hoodies, which I thought was probably to escape attention.

About a month before all of this, someone in his class was pushing me around during lunch. I wasn’t too bothered by it. I was just trying to avoid the worst hits and prolong it until either a teacher noticed or he got bored of hurting me, when all of a sudden the bully was on the ground. Zuko was there, looking at me, asking if I was okay. It was the first time I had gotten a good look at his right eye, the one that isn’t scarred, and I saw he was really worried about me. Since then, it’s felt like Zuko’s kind of been looking out for me. Part of me had been hoping we could become friends.

He was the first to see me approach their group, and while he didn’t exactly smile, he didn’t look angry either. “Aang?” he asked, as if checking to make sure he had my name right.

I ran a hand through my shaggy brown hair, trying not to look nervous. None of my foster parents had paid to have it cut in a long while. “Yeah, that’s me, Aang!” I said with a laugh. No one else was laughing. “Uh, it looks like you’re all walking home together, could I walk with you?” Everyone looked kind of confused by the question, and without anyone saying anything they spread out a little to make room for me in their group.

It was terrifying and exhilarating. It had been years since I’d spent time with anyone I wasn’t living with outside of school, and even though this was just a walk across the city, it still felt like the potential for more was there. But that was also why it was so scary.

I’m really good at smiling. Ask most people in my class, and they’ll say I’m the goofy kid, always smiling, always energetic. I am a glass-half-full type of person, and I do have way too much energy sometimes, but part of it has always been trying to fill a role. Hope is something that’s hard to sustain. It’s dangerous, because every time I hope, and I put my all into wanting something, and it doesn’t happen? It becomes that much harder to keep smiling.

“...ce again, I have taken the high score on Dancing Dragons!” Sokka was saying, bragging about some game he’d been playing at the arcade. He was wearing a dark blue tank top with some kind of professional bending team on the front, and I later learned he enjoyed wearing such tops because they let him ‘show off his guns’. The air quotes there are from Zuko, not me. With a grin on his face, he elbowed Zuko, who just looked irritated. “Zuko might be able to steal my thunder for a day or two, but inevitably it is I, Sokka, who will stand victorious!” I laughed along with him, and he seemed to like that, wrapping an arm around my neck as we kept walking. “I like this kid, he knows who to root for.”

Sokka was in the same year as Zuko, and it was common knowledge at school that they were best friends. Friendships between people of different Nations isn’t exactly unheard of around here, but the fact they’d been inseparable since they were old enough to start going to school stood out.

They also are really different. Sokka is never afraid to speak his mind, or speak at all, and he seems to like nothing more than being the eye of everyone’s attention. Zuko is the type to be quiet unless he absolutely has to say anything, and shrink away from people looking at him most of the time. But they spent nearly all their free time together, even if I couldn’t understand why. I only really knew Sokka from afar, this was the first time he’d ever talked to me.

With a sigh and the forceful removal of Sokka’s arm from around my neck, his younger sister Katara looked at me with sympathy. “You don’t have to laugh at what he says, Aang. The positive feedback only makes him worse.” I nodded along to what she was saying, while doing my best not to look like I was staring.

This was the fifth time Katara had talked to me. Yes, I had counted, and I know that’s kind of weird. Katara is...radiant. The kind of beautiful that people write songs about, or that royalty fought wars over in old stories. It wasn’t like she dressed really fancy, though. While still keeping with a Water Tribe blue, the t-shirts or blouses she wore went lighter than her brother’s, and she made whatever she wore look like designer clothing with how she moved in them: with total confidence.

It isn’t only her beauty that catches my attention. Katara had a reputation at school, one so well known she didn’t have to enforce it too much anymore. She was a year older than me, and apparently, her first year she was sent to the principal’s office five times for violence, which I couldn’t believe when I first heard it. Any time she saw someone being bullied, she stepped in. She knows how to protect herself too, being easily one of the best benders at the school, and making sure to keep some water with her in a plastic bottle wherever she goes. She hadn’t had disciplinary issues since then, all the bullies having learned not to try anything when she was around. It was when I first learned all of that about her that my heart started beating too fast whenever she was around.

I couldn’t even look at her as we were all walking down the street. Hoping beyond all hopes that I wasn’t visibly blushing, I was spared having to say anything by the last person in the group. “Guys, let’s cut through there, we’ll save time.” With an extended finger, we all saw that Toph was pointing at a construction site. “There’s no one in there, and we all live that way, right?” No one else had any complaints, and they all changed direction. All except me, since I had my feet planted. Her foggy eyes looked at me. “What, are you  _ scared _ ?”

Of all of them, Toph is the only one in my grade, though we don’t have a lot of classes together. She wears pretty bland, practical clothes, usually in some shade of yellow or green. After all, even though she can afford nicer things, she doesn’t really care what she looks like and laughs at anyone who even suggests she should try to look ‘pretty’.

No one messes with Toph. Regardless of the fact her family has money, there’s the way she carries herself. Toph’s the kind of person who doesn’t move out of anyone’s way, they get out of hers. I don’t know if anyone has ever actually considered bullying her, but if they tried, I feel sorry for them. Toph is blind, but she got special courses for earthbenders on how to use the earth as a sense through their bare feet. That means she has special permission to walk around without shoes all day, she can still kind of see, and she’s a really strong earthbender.

I would be lying if I tried to tell you that Toph didn’t scare me, at least a little bit. But at the same time, everyone was looking at me, and I didn’t want to look like I was scared. Sure, going through an empty construction site would probably be okay, but for some reason I felt this weird sensation at the idea of even trying to go in there. It was like alarm bells were ringing in my head, the place felt like it was oozing badness. But I put all of that aside and started to follow them, trying to ignore whatever it was my mind and body were trying to tell me. “Just of you,” was the best thing I could think of to say to what she’d said.

Once I’d caught up, she let out a bark of laughter and slugged me in the shoulder. It hurt. A lot. “Good!” she said back to me, and everyone laughed a little at that, me included.

That was how we ended up in the construction site that night. It was clear they’d been building something, maybe a mall or an office, but work had really only just started, and only the skeletons of the unfinished buildings were around us. There was no heavy construction equipment, but I never learned if that meant they’d just taken them away for the night or if they were mostly using earthbending.

We were halfway through the area when I felt something. I’m an airbender, though I’ve never really been trained in it or anything. Still, I could feel something weird in the air above us, or maybe I heard it...I don’t know. I’ll probably never know. But whatever it was, it made me look up, and I was the first to see it.

Some kind of big metal thing was falling out of the sky, heading straight for us. “Guys!” I shouted, and pointed to what I was seeing. Everyone turned their attention to the thing, except for Toph. Realizing she’d be in the dark, I said, “It looks like some kind of weird plane or something, and it’s coming right at us!” Once I’d said it, we all knew what we had to do.

We started running, trying to get out of the path of the falling object. I almost thought we weren’t going to make it, but without turning around we all heard the sound of it making contact with the dirt, sliding across the site until it slammed into one of the unfinished buildings. None of us knew what to do. Had a plane just crashed?

But when we turned around to look at it, I knew it wasn’t a plane. I’ve always kind of liked aviation, and this didn’t look like anything I’d ever read about. It looked...alien. Like something out of science fiction. It was definitely made of metal, but the exact material didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen. It was a strange color, at once blue and green and almost purple too, and almost looked like it had once flowed like water before settling into a shape. At the center of the craft was some kind of big dome, and from that came bits of it that looked more recognizable, like some kind of front cockpit or some kind of weapons on the sides.

“Hey, Zuko?” Sokka asked, breaking the silence.

Sounding as awestruck as Aang felt, Zuko replied, “Yeah?”

“Since aliens are real, you owe me twenty yuans.” Sokka said it as seriously as I’d ever heard him say anything.

I could hear Zuko frowning. “We don’t know for sure there’s an alien in there.” Even as he said it, I felt like we were all wondering that same thing. Was this just some weird experimental ship? Or was it really from a place beyond the stars?

Suddenly, Toph spoke up, sounding almost...scared? “There’s definitely something inside that ship still, I can feel it, and...it doesn’t feel like a person.”

That information settled in all of our minds, until I found myself walking towards the crashed ship. “Aang!” Katara called, sounding like she was a mom in a grocery store trying to find her kid. “Where are you going?!”

My walk turned into a run, and I called out to them, “If there’s someone inside, they might be hurt!” It was the first thing I thought of, and any sense of caution disappeared when I considered that someone could be dying in that thing. I looked around the outside of it for some kind of door or hatch, and found one, though it was a lot taller than it would need to be for a human. There was no keypad or lock near it though, so I couldn’t figure out how to open it.

Luckily, it seemed that someone else took care of that for me. There was an electronic chirp, then I had to step back to stop the tall door from crushing me as it descended, turning into a ramp to the ground. Everyone else had caught up to me, I discovered, and we all watched as a being unlike any other to visit our world stepped out to greet us. It had something like the torso of a tigerhorse, except with a long prehensile tail with a blade on the end, its body covered with blue fur. But instead of a tigerhorse’s head, it had another torso, but this one looked almost like a human. That too was covered with that same fur, and it’s arms were longer and more slender than anyone’s I’d ever seen, with six fingers to each hand. There was no mouth on its face, just a really big nose like a koalabat or a foxsloth. In addition to the eyes one would expect, where one would expect, it also had antennae growing from the top of its head, both of them holding another eye on top, for a total of four.

It looked like I was right. There was a gash on the creature’s back, like on the tigerhorse part of the back, and more wounds all over, including some cuts on its head. At first, it looked like the creature’s blood was like ours, if a little darker, until I noticed it was actually blue rather than black. We must have all been staring at it in amazement when we all heard, <Do not be afraid.> The words came to us in our heads, without us actually hearing anything with our ears. It felt weird, likes someone had pushed the thoughts inside me without asking first.

Sokka was the first one to say anything to that. “Man, I knew that cactus juice had gone bad! I just didn’t think it would give me hallucinations...” No one laughed.

<This is not a hallucination,> the voice said. This time, I was able to get a better understanding for how they...sounded? That feels like the wrong word, but it’s the best I can use. They sounded older, like someone in their sixties, and there was warmth and patience in what they said, even alongside urgency. <We must hurry, there is not much time.>

“So...you’re an alien?” Zuko asked, sounding hesitant to even say it, as if he was scared of being laughed at for asking.

<That is correct. My name is Gee’atsoh-Shirrsa-Mokna, and I am an Andalite, an alien from another planet. But I am not the only alien on your world.> Something about how he’d said that last sentence made all of us more scared then we already were. <I was the leader of a scientific exploration mission, but as we were traveling to our destination, our engine suffered a malfunction, and we found ourselves emerging into your solar system. It does not match any explored system we have catalogued, but before we could attempt to call for help, another ship attacked us.>

This was a lot to take in, and the only one who felt brave enough to interrupt was Katara. “You keep saying ‘us’...are there more of you in the ship?” I couldn’t tell if she was asking if they needed help, or if she was scared of what they might do.

We could all hear Gee’atsoh make a strange sound in our heads, one I would later learn was the Andalite equivalent of a sigh. <Not anymore. I ordered them to all escape in smaller survey ships while they could, but their signals have all disappeared.>

“Well what attacked you?!” Toph asked, sounding annoyed at how everyone else has been changing the subject. “What other aliens are on our planet?”

<Yeerks.> The way Gee’atsoh said the word felt like a curse word, the kind that some of my foster parents would have washed my mouth out with soap for saying around them. <They are parasitic creatures, small and slimy, but are able to enter the brains of other animals. In doing so, they take complete control of the body, leaving the host to watch from inside their mind as the Yeerk runs their life. We call infested hosts Controllers. Their only weakness is a need to return to a Yeerk Pool once every three days, in their real forms, or else starve from a lack of their sun’s radiation. It was Bug Fighter, run by Controllers, that shot my ship down, and will soon be here to kill me.> The alien said this matter-of-factly, like it was just another piece of information and not the knowledge he was about to perish.

Feeling like there was nothing else I could do, I reached out and grabbed Gee’atsoh’s furry hand, gripping it and trying to pull him away. “Come with us!” I told him, pulling on him with all the force my small frame could manage. “We’ll hide you, you don’t have to die!”

<Yes, I do.> Gee’atsoh sounded sad, pulling his hand away from mine, all four of his eyes trained on me. It was a really weird nostalgic feeling, like I was being sat down by my favorite grandfather. Or at least, how I imagined that would feel...since I’d never had one. Right? <I will not be able to escape them, but you will. Your planet is being infested by these creatures, and I have no doubt they seek to rule you, to subjugate your entire species until you are all Controllers.> The idea was absolutely terrifying, and I didn’t need to look at the others to see they felt the same way.

Then the Andalite went back into his ship, coming back a few seconds later holding a glowing blue cube. <This is how you can fight back,> he explained. <Andalite technology is able to grant beings the ability to morph. Please, touch the cube.> We all paused, if only for just a second, then one by one placed a hand on the device. It felt warm, but not like a computer that had been on too long. It almost felt alive. Once we were all touching the cube, there was an instant when it felt like something changed about us, like something flowed into us from the cube. Then, he pulled the cube away. <All you must do is touch any animal and concentrate. You can acquire their DNA, and once that is done, you can picture that animal in your mind to become them. Through morphing, you can defeat the Yeerks.>

My mouth was so dry, I didn’t know if I could have said anything if I had thought of anything worth saying. Sokka didn’t seem to have the same issue. “Anything else we need to know?” For the first time, he actually sounded serious.

Something about the Andalite’s facial expression changed, and I realized it felt like he was smiling at Sokka. <Yes, there is. There is an important time limit you must always keep in mind. If you stay morphed for more than two hours, you will be a  _ nothlit _ , stuck in that body for the rest of your life.> I was still trying to wrap my head around becoming an animal, but then I found myself having to think about being stuck as one, forever. <We do not have any more time, go, hide!> he told us, before trotting out on his hooved legs into one of the nearby skeletal unfinished buildings.

We did as he said, and it was Zuko who spotted a half-finished wall near the edge of the construction site and whispered, “There!” He started sprinting, and we followed, until all five of us were crouched behind the cement structure. We waited there, unable to move, struggling not to breathe too loudly, when we heard something.

There was something else in the air when I looked over the wall, though this ship was not as aesthetically pleasing as the other one. It was a sickly yellow color, and covered in spikes, sides armed with what looked like some form of weapon. Before it could land, the ship Gee’atsoh had crashed in exploded, and the wall protected us from the little debris there was. It seemed like the explosion atomized most of the ship.

We all looked at each other, making sure none of us were hurt, before any of us mustered the courage to look over the wall again. Now, the Bug Fighter had landed, and Gee’atsoh was walking towards it, his tail moving around as if ready to strike. It was getting dark, so we couldn’t make out too many details of the man who stepped out of the ship, aside from a guess at his gender and that he had dark hair. He was wearing a black business suit, and for a moment we started to question the alien’s story. What if this was just some high-ranking member of the United Forces, in some experimental secret ship? Then we saw what flanked the man.

They were enormous lizard creatures, with beaked mouths and bladers on their arms and legs, so sharp they gleamed even in the meager light before sunset. “An Andalite!” we heard the man say, his voice muffled by the sound of the ship, which was still running, like a Satomobile idling and burning gas. “Shame about the ship, we could have used the parts. Do you submit to being infested? It’s the only way you come out of this alive.”

There was no way I could doubt the truth now. There was a Yeerk, some kind of alien, inside that man’s head, controlling his actions. He was offering life to Gee’atsoh, in return for him suffering the same fate. <Death is preferable.> Even as far away as we were, his voice in our heads sounded as if he were right next to us.

Gee’atsoh took a step forward, clearly ready to do battle against his foes...only for the ship to suddenly fire some sort of weapon at him. Katara sucked in a breath, the sound only muffled by the sound of the explosion as a chunk of the ground disappeared along with Gee’atsoh, and dust settled into the air. We all held our breath, but as the dust settled, we saw he was gone, no trace he’d ever been there aside from some blue-black blood mixed in with the dirt. The man looked at one of the bladed aliens. “Clean the mess up, leave no trace this ever happened.”

We took that as our cue, hoping everything that had happened was enough of a distraction as we darted away, leaving the construction site behind us as. None of us said a word. We all ran off to our homes, still replaying what we’d seen in our minds, unable to believe it.

To this day, I can still remember Gee’atsoh’s warm voice in my head, and his kind face. Despite the short time I’d known him, seeing him die was a wound that still hurts, reopened every time I have a nightmare of seeing it all happen again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *takes huge intake of breath* This is going to be a big project, happy to finally get it started.
> 
> Brief notes: Ten 'books' per 'season', roughly corresponding to each season of the original Avatar, each 'book' has a different narrator, each 'book' will be five chapters long.
> 
> This takes place 225ASC (After Sozin's Comet), but in a timeline where Sozin didn't use the Comet to genocide the Air Nomads and Aang wasn't the Air Avatar in that cycle. Who was? What did Sozin do instead? Well, if you pay attention throughout the fics, you'll be able to piece that together.
> 
> Really hope you enjoy reading this!
> 
> P.S. If you have any good ideas for what to name the series, please let me know in a comment. My brain keeps going to 'Avamorphs' or something and that just sounds terrible.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flip book animation in the corner for the first quarter: Aang walking, his body shrinking, as he morphs into a ring-tailed lemur.

I woke up the next morning in a cold sweat.

I’d dreamt about what had happened the night before: talking to Zuko and his friends, cutting through the construction site, the spaceship crashing, touching the cube, and watching the alien die. I shuddered just thinking about it as I got out of bed, got dressed for school, and quickly brushed my teeth in the bathroom. It wasn’t until I was almost done, my mind still on those weird events, that I realized there was a difference between what I remembered from the real thing and what I’d seen in the dream: there was someone else with us in my dream. She was a girl, probably around my age, wearing a red dress, long black hair, and piercing green eyes. Something about her felt familiar, but I didn’t know what.

Checking the clock, I realized I’d slept in longer that I’d expected. I’d leave soon to get to school on time, and Ling had already left for work. I grabbed some toast to snack on while I walked...then noticed something.

Despite his general boring demeanor, there was one weird thing about Ling: he had a pet. Not a normal pet either, like a dogbat or a cat. It was an expensive and exotic ring-tailed lemur, one so strangely well-behaved that Ling let it roam the house without restraint. I’d always liked petting them, and they glided across the room to a nearby counter, sticking their head towards me, clearly wanting me to indulge them.

My mind went back to the dream, to what had happened the night before. That...had been real, right? Some part of me was trying to tell me it must have all been a dream, or a hallucination, like Sokka had said. Aliens weren’t real, and ‘morphing’ wasn’t a thing. But that skeptical part of me was pretty small, actually. I couldn’t explain it, but more than anything I did find myself sure of my memory...and I was looking at a way to prove it for sure.

I gave the lemur, Kuei, the pets they so desperately wanted, and as I was touching them I tried to remember what that alien, Gee’atsoh, had said to me. I just needed to concentrate, right? I closed my eyes, and at first I wasn’t sure if it was working. But then I opened my eyes again and looked at Kuei. They were staring blankly, as though completely stunned, not rubbing their head against my hand like they usually did.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the trance seemed to end. Kuei was just as pet-happy as usual, and I looked at my hand. Had I done what the alien had said? Had I ‘acquired’ Kuei’s DNA?

I almost wanted to try morphing right then and there, but I checked the clock and felt panic hit me. I had to go!

Despite running the entire way to school, chewing on the under-done toast as a moved, I still barely made it to my first period in time. It was History, and the teacher, Zei, was ready to start a new unit with us with his usual cheery enthusiasm. “Hello, class! Today, we’ll be learning all about Sozin’s Comet!” He paused, as if waiting for us to react as excitedly as he did, but I was the only one smiling. Most of us were too tired to care about something that dry first thing in the morning, but I’d actually always liked learning History, even if I didn’t have the best grades in it. We all started pulling out our textbooks, and Zei scanned the class for someone to call on, before locking eyes with me. “Aang! You’re looking ready to start the day! Now, why don’t you tell us why Sozin’s Comet is so influential?”

The sound of everyone turning to look at me seemed loud enough to hear. I flinched.

My first few months of high school, I’d loved being called on by Professor Zei to answer questions. It was nice to get any good attention from grown-ups, and like I said before, I like History. It had taken a few direct confrontations afterwards from bullies to learn that being too excited in class is a good lightning rod for meanness. It was hard, but I tried to keep my face neutral as I came up with an answer. “Um, well, we use it to mark the years?” I knew more than that, but another lesson had been to give the minimum answer, not as much as I actually knew.

For just a second, I saw disappointment color the teacher’s features, clearly having expected a better answer from me. “That’s correct, Aang. Though it’s been difficult to spot exactly when the practice took hold and in what nation it first appeared in, for over a hundred years now people have been referring to years as BSC or Before Sozin’s Comet and ASC or After Sozin’s Comet. But as for exactly why this event is considered so important, it would be prudent to look at the actions of the man the comet is named for. While the Sixty Year War, or Sozin’s War, or the Great Fire War had already technically begun with the establishment of the first Fire Nation colonies years before the comet, Fire Lord Sozin used the firebending enhancement the comet gave to drive further into the continent. In just that one day, the Fire Nation took over ten million square miles of territory, more than a quarter of the Earth Kingdom.”

The lecture continued on from there, but as much as I wanted to pay attention to it, my mind kept wandering. Could I really turn myself into a lemur? I wanted to ask Professor Zei if I could go to the bathroom, so I could try in there, but reason won out. I didn’t know how long ‘morphing’ would take, and if I was gone too long, I could get in trouble.

That was why I waited until lunch. That would give me the most time to really try it out. The second the bell rang and everyone started heading out into the halls, I grabbed my bag and ran for the nearest bathroom. I was lucky, the one closest to me was completely empty, so I stashed my backpack behind the toilet, then closed my eyes and tried to picture Kuei’s body in my head, and really focus on it.

I knew right away it was working. If you’ve never morphed before, it’s really hard to relate the experience, but I’ll try to do as good a job as I can. So, on the one hand, you can feel your body changing. That first time, it all started with fur. Normally, hair grows so slowly you can’t feel it, but when nearly every follicle on my skin started pushing out a layer of white, black, and grey fur, it was pretty noticeable. So was what came next, as my body started compacting down, getting smaller, and my bones started changing shape and function.

That sounds awful, right? Well, it sure isn’t fun. But it doesn’t hurt either. Oh, yeah, that’s the other hand, no pain. The thing is, with what you can feel happening to your body, you almost wish there was at least some pain. Instead, I just felt the sensation of the skin at the bottom of my arms extending downwards, becoming thinner, attaching to the area under my armpits, and becoming the membranes ring-tailed lemurs use to glide. I could feel my fingers turning into something with less dexterity, and harder nails. My tailbone burst from my lower back, nearly punching a hole in my shirt, surrounded by a tube of new flesh and fur, my tail. When you feel something like that, it’s really confusing in how it doesn’t hurt in the slightest.

I didn’t have a timer on me, so I had no clue how long the morph took. It felt like it had lasted forever, but was so weirdly dreamlike that I wouldn’t have been surprised if it happened in under a minute. I opened my eyes again, and was stunned. The stall walls towered around me, the toilet was a porcelain throne more than twice my size. I let out a squeak, identical to the kind Kuei would make when something frightened them. I looked down at my body and couldn’t deny what I saw: I was an exact copy of my foster parent’s pet.

While that was settling in, something else became very clear: I had so much energy! I mean, a lot of people would say that about me normally too, but this was crazy! I felt like I could run a marathon without breaking a sweat, and other weird urges started coming to mind. I should find a high place! I should find food, berries! Are there any other lemurs nearby?

Without even thinking about how I would do it, I easily climbed up the wooden stall until I could perch on top of the ledge, looking down at the bathroom below. It was only once I was up there that the door opened and someone started to walk in, someone in my class named Shoji. I realized right then that, without someone else’s help, I wouldn’t be able to get out of the bathroom! I knew I needed Shoji’s help. <Wait, hold the door!>

I almost started squeaking in my lemur voice, to try and manipulate it into person talk, but it looked like I didn’t need to. Shoji looked around, clearly confused, and muttered, “Uh, yeah, sure, no problem.” Then, he stood here, holding the door open with one hand, waiting for someone to take advantage of it.

After I took a stunned second, I jumped down onto the floor and quickly skedaddled out of there before he knew what was going on. Then, I was in the hallway, and did my best to keep out of people’s sight while I thought.

Okay, so, what had happened back there? For a few seconds, I’d just let the body take over, and found myself mindlessly doing lemur things. Even now, as I focused on the task at hand, I could feel the urge to explore without a care in the world, and indulge in creature comforts. It didn’t take long for me to realize what was going on: those must have been my animal instincts! Useful, but also kind of scary.

That was one thing, but how had Shoji heard me? I’d just been looking at him, thinking of what I wanted to say, and he seemed to get the message. I looked from out of the corner between a set of lockers and a wall at a student passing by, a girl with her hair in pigtails. It took me a second to remember her name, but once I had I focused on her and thought as loudly as I could, <Meng, hi!>

Immediately, she turned around, smiling, scanning the hallway to look for me. “Aang?!” she asked, clearly confused on why she couldn’t see me. After a few seconds with no sign of me anywhere, she sighed and turned away. “Must have imagined it...” she muttered to herself before continuing on heading wherever she’d been going before.

There was no other conclusion I could reach from that: I could do that thing the alien had done, speak to people with just my mind! Oh, and Meng seemed happy to see me, but that would have to be something to look into later. With this in mind, I sped through the halls, sacrificing a little stealth for more speed, and took advantage of someone opening the door to the quad to get outside. Once out there, I looked around, trying to find Zuko. After all, I had to tell him about this, I had to tell the others who were there with me!

It was right around then that I realized something: things looked weird. It took a little time for me to figure out what, but I eventually put a name to it. The colors weren’t like normal. There were less of them, and everything was more muted. It was only after morphing back that I did some research and found out ring-tailed lemurs actually have one less cone in their eyes, which reduces their ability to distinguish colors. The environments they naturally live in, high-up mountain tops, don’t have the same kind of bright colors as other places do, so they didn’t really need to be able to see those other colors as much. At least, that’s what the zoology book said.

Even with that hampering my vision, I was still able to quickly find Zuko, who was sitting under a tree with Sokka and Katara. They looked nervous, glancing around at different students and talking to each other so quietly that, from how far away I was, even my lemur ears couldn’t make out what they were saying. Letting my lemur instincts run wild for a second, I climbed a nearby awning, catching the attention of a few students in the process, then glided over to land perfectly on Zuko’s shoulder. The three of them stopped talking and just stared at me, confused as to why a random animal so casually joined their little group.

Feeling weirdly proud of myself, I tried replicating that mind speaking thing again, trying to focus on the three of them only. <Hey, guys, it’s me, Aang! That morphing thing is real!> I couldn’t stop my excitement from coloring the tone of my voice, even if it wasn’t being said out loud. They all clearly heard what I said, but they didn’t look very surprised. Instead, their faces went from confused to something more stoic, like they were doing their best not to make any faces. Looking from Katara to Zuko to Sokka, I asked them, <Wait, what’s going on? Why aren’t you all excited?> After all, learning you can turn into any animal you want isn’t something that happens everyday. I think.

Katara gave me a smile that warmed my lemur heart, and I think I’m the first person to discover that even animals can have that butterflies in the stomach feeling. “We are excited, Aang, but you’re not the first to test it out.” Then, clearly trying not to draw any more attention to the three of them, Katara pointedly looked behind the tree.

Curious, I jumped off Zuko’s shoulder and looked around the tree. Sitting in a small hole was the tiniest badgermole I’d seen in my life, and if I had my regular vocal chords I would have been squealing from how cute it was. My expression even as a lemur must have given that away, because I soon heard in my head, <Call me cute and you’re dead, Lemur Boy.> Even if I hadn’t been able to tell just from the sound of her voice, the words themselves would have made it clear the badgermole was Toph.

Not wanting to die, I kept my mental mouth shut. Zuko cleared his throat, putting everyone’s attention on him. “We should meet up after school, at my house. We can discuss things in private there, without having to worry about being overheard.” It wasn’t until Zuko said those words that I remembered that this new discovery wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Sure, turning into animals was cool, but now I was doing what they’d been up to before, looking at every other student and every teacher at school with suspicion. Could any of them...be Controllers?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flip book animation in the corner for the second quarter: The ring-tailed lemur starts playing around the bottom of the page, including gliding around.

We all met up after class, right outside of the school.

It was weird, having something like that to look forward to when the last bell rang. Instead of spending the next few hours wandering around, trying to keep myself busy, I was going to hang out! With friends! Just thinking about that made a weird fluttery feeling fill up my stomach.

I was happy to have that, since it distracted from the all-consuming paranoia. I could see it in everyone else’s eyes, too. As we all walked to Zuko’s house, we were all looking at anyone we passed, and I’m sure we were wondering the same thing. ‘Is that person a Controller?’

It turned out that Zuko didn’t live too far from school, or from where I’d been living. More than that, I was surprised by how... _normal_ it looked. I know that sounds weird out of context, but Zuko always held himself in this really serious, proud, almost regal way, that without even consciously realizing it, I’d been picturing his house as some kind of palace or mansion or something. Instead, it looked exactly like the houses on either side of it.

The entire area he lived in was very typical of the city. The architecture was completely bland, very gray, not showing any real traces of influence from any of the Nations, aside from maybe some Earth Kingdom blockiness. That was counteracted in Zuko’s case once we actually entered the house, and I found it was decorated with very traditional Fire Nation furnishings. Wall scrolls and incense holders and everything in shades of red or yellow or orange.

We’d barely come through the door into the home’s front hallway when a woman came out to greet us from a room nearby. “Oh, Zuko, I didn’t know you’d be bringing company.” Even before she’d said anything, I was sure she had to be Zuko’s mom. She had the same onyx black hair, the same shade of rich gold in her eyes, and she moved with a kind of restrained politeness that reminded me immediately of Zuko’s awkward rigidity. When she looked at the people behind her son, some of that hesitation melted away as her smile warmed. “Oh, Katara and Sokka, it’s lovely to see you both again. And Toph, of course you’re always welcome in our home.” Then her eyes met mine, and her head tilted, just slightly. “I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m Ursa, Zuko’s mother.”

Now that she’d addressed me, I felt like everyone’s attention was going to laser focus on how I responded. Which is stupid now that I look back at it, they probably didn’t think anything of it. Still, I tripped over my words a little out of anxiety as I responded, “Oh! I’m Aang, and, uh, it’s nice to meet you!” It was my first time meeting any friend’s mom, or parent of any kind, so I really didn’t have any clue how I was supposed to act.

Luckily, Zuko stepped in the second I was done talking. “Would it be okay if my friends and I talked in my room together?” Even though by that point I’d already started thinking of myself as one of Zuko’s friends, the fact he seemed to confirm it with his words made me really happy.

Zuko’s mom looked kind of confused by the question. “Of course, son.” She put one hand on her hip, just touching the hem of her finely woven silk blouse, the body of it a deep Fire Nation red to match the yellow trim on the ends of the sleeves. I felt like it paired kind of weird with the very not-traditional denim jeans she was wearing with it. It was like watching an Air Nomad monk, with the tattoos and everything, riding a satocycle or something. “I’m not sure why you feel the need to ask, you know I consider your room to be your space.”

Running a hand through his shaggy black hair, Zuko looked like he didn’t want to say what he was about to. “Well...I also wanted to ask if you could not interrupt us while we’re in there, because we’re talking about...something very important, and private.” Asking that of his mom seemed to really take something from Zuko, and he quickly added, “If that’s okay with you, Mother,” before she could say anything.

That definitely seemed to surprise her, and I watched as her eyes went from Zuko to the rest of us. Then, for reasons I did not understand in the slightest (and still kind of don’t now), she lightly blushed before saying, “Of course, Zuko, that isn’t a problem at all. If you want your friends to stay for dinner, just come down to the kitchen whenever you’re ready.” Then, she started to go back into whatever room she’d been in before, then stopped to add, “Please, remember to be safe,” and shut the door behind her.

A quick look at the others showed that I wasn’t the only one a bit confused by whatever conclusions Zuko’s mom must have drawn from the conversation. But as we followed Zuko to his room, Toph took the lead so she could thump Zuko on the arm and laugh at him. “Man, I can’t believe you call your mom ‘Mother’!” Toph made sure to say the word in question with a lower tone, as if trying to emulate Zuko’s voice, poorly.

I’d expected Zuko to frown and get stoic over something like that, from everything I’d seen of him before. But to my surprise, he smiled back at her and thumped her right back. “Oh really? This coming from someone who does _the exact same thing_?” Zuko couldn’t hide the incredulousness from his voice.

“I do not!” Toph spat back, sounding offended. “I call her my mom all the time!”

Even though Zuko’s back was facing me, I swear I could _feel_ him rolling his eyes at her. “Around me, sure. But every time you’re actually around your parents, it’s ‘Mother’ this and ‘Father’ that.” Clearly unhappy with that response, Toph stomped the stone floor with her foot, and a small section of stone right where Zuko was taking his next step raised up just in time to trip him. Not enough to send him sprawling to the floor, but definitely enough to make him stumble, and judging by the tears in his eyes, he must have bruised his toe in the hit. “Toph!”

I’d never seen them interact at school before, but watching that happen was when I started to understand their dynamic. I’m an only child (as far as I know), but I’d seen enough people at school before to recognize a sibling squabble when it was happening in front of me. I didn’t get the full story of their shared history until a while after this, but I was finally starting to get that they were a lot closer than I’d realized.

Once we were in Zuko’s room, which I was amazed to see had a lock on the door (which he used right away), we all kind of settled. Sokka and Toph immediately flung themselves on Zuko’s bed, then relished the annoyed look on his face. Katara pulled out his desk’s chair for him, which he took, still looking sulky, as Katara sat on the floor. Then, she smiled at me and patted the area next to her, and it took me a few seconds to realize what she meant. Trying not to blush bright enough for her to notice, I quickly sat next to her, though not too close to where I’d be distracted.

We were all together now, with no one around to listen in. But none of us seemed to want to say anything first. After almost a minute of silence, Zuko spoke up. “We can’t ignore this forever.” I saw everyone tense up as he said it, at the same time my own body did it too. It’s hard not to feel tense once you know the truth. “Last night actually happened. We can morph now. That means...” We all knew what he was going to say next, but none of us jumped in to finish the sentence for him as he trailed off. Finally, almost in a whisper, he said, “...the Yeerks are here.”

Immediately, Sokka raised a pointer finger and said, “I mean, we don’t _know_ that. Just because we can turn into animals now doesn’t mean the alien guy from last night was telling the truth.” I could see Toph and Katara were listening to what Sokka was saying, though they didn’t look convinced. “Maybe he was a criminal or something, and some high-ranking government people or White Lotus agents teamed up with other aliens to execute him?” What he was saying was technically possible.

But I didn’t want to hear that. “That’s not true!” I said, my voice raising up into almost a shout. “Gee’atsoh wasn’t lying! Don’t you remember what the guy who killed him said? He asked if Gee’atsoh was willing to be infested! We can’t pretend this isn’t happening just because it’s scary!” I don’t know why I got so mad, really, or why I was so sure that the Andalite hadn’t lied to us. He had seemed kind but we’d barely known each other. I trusted him anyway, completely. I still do.

“Let’s say it’s all true,” Katara said, jumping in now and looking between me and her brother. I felt embarrassed for getting mad, but she didn’t look upset with me at all. “The Yeerks are here. They’re taking over people’s bodies. They’re taking over the whole planet. We might be the only people who know.” Katara spoke like a professor speaking to a class, her words full of conviction, seemingly empty of any fear or doubt or rage. “What are we going to do about it?”

The question was out in the open now. The real question. The one we were all afraid to answer.

We sat there, in that room together, for what felt like an eternity as we all tried to think about what to say. Then, we all started to talk at the same time, none of us able to hear what anyone else was saying. All of us, except for Zuko. Instead, he just held up a hand, and we all stopped and looked at him. Then, he exhaled, clearly feeling as on-edge as the rest of us even if he wasn’t showing it the same way. “We should all talk one at a time. Let’s go clockwise, starting with Toph.”

She did not look very thrilled to suddenly have all our attention focused on her, but she rolled her blind eyes and said, “Okay, sure.” Then she took in a deep breath, exhaled, and told us, “I don’t know.” We all waited, expecting her to say more, but she just looked at Sokka, clearly expecting him to go next.

Scratching his completely smooth chin as if there was even the hint of a beard there, Sokka made it look like he had to think over his position a lot. Finally, he said, “I don’t think we should do anything.” Several of us looked at him, incredulous. He scoffed. “We’re _kids_. Like, some of us are actual, literal children,” he added, looking pointedly between Toph and I. “I’m not happy about some random aliens trying to take over the world or whatever, but I’ve got enough things to worry about in my life already, I don’t need to add saving the world to my plate. We can just tell someone in authority, and they can handle it.” With that, Sokka had said his piece.

Now it was my turn, and I thought it over one more time before nodding my head. I knew what I wanted to say. “I can’t just do nothing. Even if none of you want to try and stop the Yeerks, I will. They...they killed Gee’atsoh. He ended up here by accident, he was just trying to explore the universe! But when he realized what was going on, he told us the truth and gave us the power to help. If we don’t try to stop the Yeerks, then we’ll be refusing his last wishes.” There was a lot more to why I felt the way I did, but I didn’t want to ramble or anything. What was most important, I thought, was that we’d been trusted to do this. We had to.

“I agree with Aang,” were the first words out of Katara’s mouth, and I had to pinch myself to check if I was dreaming. I’d never seen Katara looking this...fierce. I knew she could be protective, but there was an edge to her words as she continued that almost scared me. “These creatures are horrible. They take away people’s free will, they make them slaves. If we don’t stop them, how many people will suffer? How many will be infested while we stay safe?” She was looking her brother in her eyes as she asked her last question.

All eyes were on Zuko again, and none of us could tell what he was thinking. That was a weird side-effect of his huge facial scar. I mean, I bet Zuko was pretty stoic before he’d gotten it too, but it just seemed to make him even harder to read, y’know? He took his time thinking before he said what he wanted to say. “Sokka has a point. We are kids. Fighting a war...would be dangerous.” From the way he said that, I felt like he knew something about danger that I didn’t. “But I can’t just keep living my life like I did before, now that I know what’s really going on. And telling an adult could be fatal. If we tell the wrong person, if they’re a Controller? They’ll kill us. Or infest us.” I shivered at that. I...hadn’t considered that possibility.

Sokka looked annoyed that Zuko was taking some sort of vague middle-path. “Okay, so what exactly do you think is such a good idea then?”

“We vote.” That seemed to take Sokka by surprise, and even I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant, but Zuko explained, “Everyone who’s up for fighting the Yeerks, raise your hand. But if we don’t vote unanimously, then none of us should do it. Either we fight together, or we don’t fight at all.” Then, Zuko raised his own hand into the air, the first to vote. Mine joined his a second later, and I was happy to look over and see Katara was voting with us.

Looking at how his sister was voting, Sokka’s expression got a lot more...serious. “Katara, we can’t. You know...if we died doing this, Dad...” I didn’t know what he was talking about, but at his words, Katara only raised her hand even higher. Then, we all noticed that Toph had added her own hand into the mix when no one was looking.

“I assume everyone but Sokka is voting yes?” she asked, and we all made noises of agreement. I was confused for a second on why she was asking, but then I realized her feet were tangling in the air, so she had no way to ‘see’ how any of us were voting. “Alright, we all gotta peer pressure Sokka then.” I laughed, but we did all turn our full attention to him.

For a second, I thought he might hold out, but then he sighed and raised a hand too. It was decided. We were going to fight. “Okay, so since we’re doing this,” he said, sounding exasperated with how this had turned out. “First things first: we need to get morphs.”

“Toph and I already have one!” I said, grinning. I was so excited to try morphing a lemur again, it had been so fun the first time! I knew if I did it in a park or outside the city, it would be even more wonderful.

Sokka’s palm collided with his forehead as he let out an annoyed grunt. “Okay, rephrasing that: we need to get _battle_ morphs.” I wasn’t the only one looking at him, confused as to what he meant. “Guys, lemurs and baby badgermoles are adorable, but they’re not exactly the most combat-capable animals. We all need to get morphs we can use in a fight, so we don’t end up like Gee’atsoh.”

As much as I didn’t like the sound of fighting...I knew Sokka had a point. Once we started trying to mess up what the Yeerks were doing, they would probably try to kill us. Defending ourselves was necessary. “But where are we going to find dangerous animals like that?” I asked, scratching my head.

“Hah!” Toph barked, and she smirked at all of us as she said, “Don’t worry about that, Lemur Boy. I can get us into a zoo, no problem. They’ve got lots of nasty stuff there we can use.” It sounded like a good idea, but I found myself looking to Zuko to see what he thought.

In fact, we all were. Clearly kind of unsettled by how we’d all turned to him for what he thought, he cleared his throat and said, “Well, let’s get that done now, before it gets dark.” With a few hurried goodbyes to Zuko’s mom, we all left his house and set out for the nearby zoo, ready to acquire some animals.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flip book animation in the corner for the next quarter of the book: The ring tailer lemur keeps playing...but a nearby digital clock display begins ticking down to zero.

So, uh, I can’t really tell you  _ how _ we got into the zoo. Or even what zoo it is. Like I said at the start, we can’t tell you too much about ourselves. So all I’ll say is that Toph got us into the zoo, and it was only kind of illegal.

I’d actually never been to a zoo before, and even as afternoon was turning into evening, it was so cool to see. The place was staffed by a lot of Earthbenders, who were able to maintain the cages regardless of their scale. The area where visitors went in to see them was actually underground, allowing them to see the animals up close with only a wall of thick glass between them and the animals.

But that’s not where we were. We were up above, where the staff was able to easily move from one enclosure to another, without the zoo’s customers ever seeing them. It was half footpath and half hallway, as many areas that required higher enclosures had walls that stretched above ground level, and several small buildings were littered around as well. I thought they were probably storage places or staff offices, but I didn’t know for sure.

The zoo had closed hours ago, and there were enough walls that we could sneak around without the very few remaining zoo employees knowing we were there. Toph came in extra-handy thanks to her earth-sensing abilities, letting us know ahead of time if anyone was coming too close.

We avoided areas like the avian exhibits or the aquarium, since we were supposed to be there for morphs we could fight with. “Does anyone know what they want to get?” Katara asked everyone as they went from enclosure to enclosure, spying down into them to see what was available.

There was a lot of non-committal murmuring from everyone else, but I was eager to tell them, “I was thinking of a flying bison!” I’d always found them interesting in the few books I’d read that mentioned them, and I had heard this zoo had a few.

Sokka looked skeptical. “A sky bison? Really? I thought we were getting battle morphs.”

Before I could say anything, Katara elbowed him in the stomach and said, “I think it’s a great idea, Aang.” Then she moved away from his side and came to stand by me, telling everyone else, “I know what I want too, so I think it would save time if we go to acquire our animals, while you guys browse around and try to find something for you.”

For a second, it looked like Sokka was going to argue, but Zuko replied, “Good idea.” Sokka still rolled his eyes, but he let Katara and I walk off without another word.

It was around this point that I realized that Katara and I...were alone together. This had never happened before. I felt the need to impress her. “I actually know a lot about flying bison! They have five stomachs, but their mouth only has twenty teeth, ten up and ten down!” It was only after saying what I did that I realized maybe that wasn’t the most impressive facts to throw her way.

But if Katara was put off by them, she didn’t show it. Instead, she gave me a warm smile and asked, “Why do you like them so much?”

I don’t know why, but I felt awkward telling her the truth. “Well...they’re really cute. They can fly. They’re supposed to be really nice.” But it felt like she could see there was something else to it, so I added, “...and they’re connected to the Air Nomads.” ‘Connected’ is kind of an understatement. Not only are they the ones who domesticated the great big fluffy animals, they also still kept more than ninety percent of the world’s flying bison population in their care.

She must have heard the darker emotions I tried to hide when I said that last part. “Aang...are you an airbender?” Katara sounded almost hesitant to ask, but I nodded my head without looking right at her. Unlike most people from the Water Tribes or the Fire Nation, most people with Air Nomad ancestry can blend it pretty easily in the various Earth countries, unless you’re the kind who is completely traditional, with a shaved head and tattoos all over your body. “Why are you living here then? I thought most airbenders lived at the air temples.”

Even hearing that question hurt. “I don’t really know,” I admitted to her. “My first memories were with a foster family, and I don’t know who my real family is. I’ve tried reaching out to air temples, to see if they’d take me in but...” I let out a sigh. “They’re not very open to outsiders these days.” I didn’t know why that was, why the once accepting people I read about in books were now hermits who avoided the rest of the world. I tried to smile though, and showed Katara something I thought was cool. Taking a small breath, I did a small twirl and waved one hand, and the air actually did what I wanted it too, making a small, spinning breeze. “It’s not a lot, but I’m trying to learn.” From the smile on her face, Katara seemed to be impressed? Feeling bad for just talking about myself, I asked her, “So, what animal did you want?”

Rather than say anything back right away, Katara’s eyes lit up as she looked into a nearby enclosure, then sprinted towards it, going along the wall until she reached the metal retractable ladder used to enter the area. Looking down myself, I saw the interior of this habitat was kept artificially cold, which required the use of a glass ceiling for insulation. It was kind of hard to see inside it, but as Katara started to climb down she told me, “They’re polar bear dogs!” before making her way down so she could get inside.

I thought it was an interesting choice. While some people had tried taming them, polar bear dogs were really independent animals, and it was rare for one to really accept a person as their owner. They didn’t seem super fierce, but I’d read how dangerous they could be when their pack was threatened. In less than five minutes, Katara had climbed back up, looking kind of scared, holding one hand up to look at it. “You got it?” I asked her.

“Yep,” she said, sounding kind of far away, like her mind was elsewhere. “I was scared to go near it at first...but when I touched it, it just froze.” Then she seemed to come out of her trance, and told me, “It’s a good thing, too. I’m sure the others are picking dangerous animals, so making sure they can’t attack us is important.”

From there, finding the flying bison exhibit wasn’t hard. There was no real ceiling on this one, but there was a steel net covering the top, to avoid them flying away. The gaps were big enough for me to slip through, and with my heart beating fast, I climbed down into their habitat.

The whole area was decorated like the top of a mountain. There were trees I’d read about, ones that normally only grew at really high altitudes, thick layers of grass, large boulders...it almost looked like illustrations I’d seen in books about the areas around the air temples. There were only two flying bison there, one of which was asleep, and the other was looking right at me.

If you’ve never been close to a flying bison, let me tell you right now: they are so much bigger than you’re expecting them to be. I found my eyes drifting to its mouth, and suddenly realized that if it wanted to, it could definitely just eat me, swallow me in one gulp. Of course, it wouldn’t do that, flying bison are herbivores, but still! When you’re standing ten feet away from one, it’s hard not to worry about that.

The rational thing to do would be to go and acquire the sleeping one, but there was something in this bison’s eyes...it was almost like it was calling to me. Carefully, I took a step closer, and it didn’t react. “Hey, buddy,” I said to it, trying to sound calm. “I’m going to pet you, okay?” It actually huffed at that, but didn’t try to avoid me as I took a few more steps. Finally, I was close enough to touch it. I reached into its long white fur, touching the thick skin underneath, and I did what I had with the lemur that morning. I could feel the bison relax around me, stunned as I took a sample of its DNA. Then, letting out the breath I’d been holding, I ran back to the ladder and climbed it up to see Katara.

That was the first time I ever saw Katara really smile. Not just a polite, normal person smile, but a real genuine Katara smile, one that lit up her entire face. “That was great, Aang! Let’s go see everyone else.” I was so floored by the compliment that I can’t actually remember anything between her saying that and suddenly standing with everyone else, back near how we’d gotten into the zoo in the first place.

They’d gotten their morphs too, so we all started heading out of the zoo. None of us said anything. It was dark now, and we really wanted to avoid running into any guards or anything now. Even if they weren’t Controllers, it would still be hard to explain being there that late.

We were just outside the zoo, on a cross street, when suddenly Toph’s entire body went tense. “Someone’s coming,” she hissed, and we all quickly followed her lead, dashing around a nearby corner.

From the opposite direction we’d run, we heard a pair of voices. “Man, did they have to put it so far out the way?” came one voice, a woman’s.

“Stop complaining, at least ours is in the same city. I feel really bad for the poor saps who have to drive half a day there and half a day back just to get their three-day fix.” This voice was a man’s, and we all froze at his words. That...they couldn’t be...

That was all we could hear of their words, as they went into the building whose other side we were leaning against, but Zuko said what we were all thinking. “They...might be Controllers.” He didn’t say the other thing we were all thinking. If they were...then the place they just went into must have had one of those pool things, that had the stuff they needed to live!

“They are,” Toph said, clear confidence in her voice. “It’s faint, but I can feel something under this building. Something that shouldn’t be there. It’s a Yeerk Pool.”


	5. Chapter 5

After Toph had made her declaration, we were all frozen, standing there in numb silence as the voices of the Controllers faded away. The first to speak was Sokka. “And how, Toph, do you actually know for sure it’s a Yeerk Pool? It could just be-”

Irritation coloring her voice, Toph snapped, “Oh, I’m sorry, Sokka. I just thought it was weird to feel that inside this normal looking building there was some kind of secret underground room with a hot tub filled with stuff vibrating the earth around it. Oh, and what feels like four people in a cage. But please, go on and explain what the  **logical** explanation for all of that is.” Sokka winced at that.

Before either of them could try turning it into a real argument, Zuko spoke up. “There are people in there? In a cage?” Toph nodded her head, and I exhaled sharply. It was weird enough knowing about the Yeerks and everything, but the idea that there were people, held captive in that place...it made all of it more real for me. And way more terrifying. Zuko didn’t look scared though. He looked...angry. “In that case, we should try and rescue them.” Katara looked completely onboard with that plan, and from the dangerous smile on her face, Toph agreed.

Sokka, on the other hand, looked like he had an objection. “Listen, if there are people trapped in there, obviously it would be great to save them. But how are we going to do that? They could have some kind of crazy alien weaponry with them, and even if they don’t, we couldn’t let any Controllers leave if they saw our faces. If they did...we’d be in more danger than any of us could handle.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Sokka might not have been coming out and saying it, but it almost sounded like he was implying that if we were spotted, we’d need to kill those Controllers.

“We can’t kill them,” I said, unable to stay quiet any longer. I knew everyone’s eyes were on me, but I realized that I didn’t care. I had to say this. “Taking a life is something you can’t ever take back. And remember, inside each person is a Yeerk controlling them, but that also means it’s still someone’s body. They’re not doing these things because they want to, and if we kill them, it would be worse than murder!” I was doing my best to keep my voice down, even though there weren’t other people out this late on the street.

It was only after I’d said what I felt I’d had to that I realized how angry I had sounded. I wasn’t really mad at Sokka, but even if I hadn’t been raised by the Air Nomads, I still believed in their philosophy, or at least some of it. That included all life being precious. Sokka looked torn on what to say back to me, before settling on, “If we’re fighting these things, Aang, we’re going to have to do things we don’t want to. That’s what war is.” Sokka talked about war like it was something he knew better than I did.

“You both have a point,” Zuko said, raising up one hand vertically to each of us. “We need to go in with a plan, and it might be necessary to...do what we have to.” I blanched at that, but then Zuko nodded at me and added, “But that doesn’t mean we should go in with wiping them all out in mind. Our goal is to get to the prisoners and get out, without revealing who we are.” Then he looked down at Toph and asked, “Toph, can you give us a good idea of the building’s layout?”

It took a little bit of walking around the perimeter for Toph to get a good ‘sense’ of what it was like (which in the process led to us realizing it was apparently some lawyer’s office), and she was able to give the rest of us a rundown. I won’t bore you with all the details, but it was like any other small office inside, with a few rooms and a bathroom. It was the restroom that had some secret entrance through a large tunnel to the underground Yeerk Pool, which itself was fairly spacious. In there was the Pool and the cage which held the people. There were four people in the cage, plus two more who had just entered. There were another four people too, but they were standing at attention, so Toph guessed they were the guards. At the very least, she thought they felt like normal people, and not those reptilian aliens we’d all seen in the construction site.

After listening to all of this, Zuko told us his plan. “Let’s all go in, double check the office itself is empty, then we can try our battle morphs. That way, no one will see it’s really us, and we can storm in. We’ll fight the guards, save the people without Yeerks in their heads, then retreat.” Everyone else seemed to like the plan, but I had to speak up again.

“Um, I don’t think that would work for me,” I told everyone. “My battle morph is way too big to get in there, and it wouldn’t work well underground anyway. How about I morph a lemur again instead? I can keep watch out here, then let you guys know with that thought talking thing if more people head in while you’re in there.” I sounded guilty bringing this up, but it wasn’t because I was embarrassed by my choice of battle morph or anything. It was because I was lying. I just...didn’t want to go in there. I didn’t know why, but heading in there with them sent this feeling of utter doom through me, and I trusted that instinct.

After considering what I said, Zuko agreed. “Okay, Aang, that’s actually a good idea. Now, let’s go.” They went around the corner and I heard the distinct sound of someone, probably Toph, kicking the door in. That left me by myself, so I went into a nearby alley, hid my clothes behind a trash can, and started to morph.

It’s weird, because I’d morphed a lemur earlier that day already, so you’d think I’d have been used to it or something.

I wasn’t.

Every time you morph an animal, it’s different. Unlike last time, where the fur was the first step, this time I was immediately greeted by the view of everything around me growing larger, my perspective shifting as I shrank. I could hear the sound of my skeleton changing size and shifting placement of what went where through my skin, but I was still all fleshy, no fur. It was only once my eyes, ears, my entire body had changed, including growing a tail, that I finally started getting furry.

Listen, I might like morphing, it’s really neat becoming other animals, but it is also really gross.

Once I was all the way lemur, I started getting those feelings again, only this time I was outside to start with. The buildings were so high! I wanted to climb them! But I tried to reign in those lemur instincts. After all, I had to do what I said I’d do. Scrambling down a sidewalk, doing my best not to draw undue attention towards my tiny furry self, I crossed the street, stopping to look both ways for satomobiles before I did, climbed up the wall to the zoo. Perching there, I looked at the office my friends had gone into, and waited.

I have a hard time keeping track of time normally, but when you’re a lemur, it’s even more difficult. Rationally, I knew I hadn’t been waiting for them very long, but it felt to me like it had been an eternity and a half. My wavering attention was completely diverted when I saw a bug nearby, crawling on the stone wall. Normally, I’m a vegetarian, but suddenly I felt like I was starving, and that bug looked like the tastiest thing in the world. I lept at it, captured it between my paws, and threw it into my mouth.

It was only after the (delicious) cricket-ant was well on its way to my lemur stomach that it hit me what I’d done. I hadn’t eaten the meat of a living thing in almost a decade, since I’d made the promise to myself when I was four. But being a lemur had made me break it in minutes. I tried to rationalize it to myself as being okay, because lemurs had to eat bugs and stuff to survive, but the excuse felt hollow to me.

So, I did what I normally did when feeling overwhelmed with guilt or sadness or anything like that. I ignored it. Momentarily forgetting my self-assignment completely, I ran across the wall and glided to a nearby tree growing in the sidewalk, running along its branches and just enjoying myself. It wasn’t too dissimilar to when I’d go to the park to expend all my energy, except as a lemur the giddiness and sense of losing myself in the fun was magnified. Even as bad as I was at telling time, I was aware at the time that this mission was taking a lot longer than I’d been expecting.

All of that came crashing down when I suddenly caught sight of two women running down the sidewalk, towards the lawyer’s office everyone had gone in. What my lemur eyes lost in color, they made up for with sharpness, and I could clearly see the bulges of some sort of handheld weapon in their pockets, where each of them hand one hand ready to reach in and grab it at a moment’s notice.

My mind back on-track, I realized they were almost to the office and I focused on where Toph said the Yeerk Pool was supposed to be and shouted with my mind, <Everybody, they’ve got reinforcements heading your way!> I’m not sure how, but I felt like I had enough of a sense of thoughtspeak by that point to know I’d sent the message, even if I wasn’t exactly sure who had gotten it.

<Things are bad, Aang,> came Zuko’s voice in return, right away. <We’ll try to leave now, so be ready.> His thoughtspeak voice was tense, and I couldn’t help but worry about what was going on inside.

The new people were about to open the door when I made my move. Jumping out of the tree with all the force I could muster, I glided through the air before slamming into the back of one of the people’s heads. Now, lemurs don’t really weigh that much, but the extra force from my jump combined with the complete surprise of an unexpected animal attack meaning I was able to knock my target to the ground, and they fell into the other woman on the way down. “What the...?” one of them mumbled, before they caught sight of me.

Not in the mood to be captured by possible Controllers, I was already lumbering down the street as fast as I could, but a quick look over my shoulder confirmed they were up and running after me. But just at that moment, as they started to catch up, the cavalry arrived.

Katara was the first through the door. Her enormous polar bear dog body slammed into the already damaged door and sent it flying off its hinges, and once onto the street, she stared daggers at my attackers and let loose a long rumbling growl that made both the people chasing me freeze in fear.

Next through the door was a huge goat gorilla, with long sharp horns sprouting from its head and long muscley arms thumping on the ground to propel it faster in its running. We met eyes, and then I saw the creature smirk, reaching out to grab a metal road sign and ripping it from the earth to use as a weapon. It was then I knew for sure it had to be Sokka.

There was absolutely no doubt as to who the badger mole was. Toph had chosen to go with another non-adult member of the species, not as small as the one she’d been earlier, but not nearly as enormous as the animals got at full size. Unlike my bison morph, it was still small enough to fit inside a building without being too small for fighting, and from how she was able to turn her full attention to the armed pursuers, mischief in her blind eyes, I realized she could still use that earthbending ability to see, even as a badger mole. Maybe, I wondered, it was because the animals could already earthbend?

The last out of the office was the most surprising. Despite seeing them in books, on television, in artwork, none of it did justice to seeing a dragon in real life. This particular dragon had a deep red coloration, and there was a long swathe of its neck where scales gave way to thick scar tissue. When Zuko turned his attention on the women, and exhaled flumes of fire from his nostrils, it was finally enough for their survival instinct to surpass they fear, and they took off into the night.

Seeing all my friends in their battle morphs, I felt pretty confident in how we handled ourselves. But then I saw Toph wince as she stepped forward with one paw, and realized that on one side of her torso the fur was singed, and drops of blood were falling to the sidewalk from the wound. I froze, and ran up to her, terrified. <We need to get somewhere we can morph back,> Zuko told us, so I darted back to the alleyway I’d morphed in, with everyone right behind me.

Once we were there, I watched them all morph back, and was happy to see that Toph’s injury was gone in her normal state, even if she still looked pale and clammy. It was right around then that I realized they were all naked, and turned to look away from them, embarrassed. No one else seemed to worry about that, they all looked super alert and on-edge. “We left our clothes inside,” Zuko said, before adding, “Who lives the closest?” I later learned that he was downplaying the situation, just a little. I hadn’t morphed an animal bigger than me yet, and it turned out if you tried to do that wearing clothes, they got torn to shreds.

I didn’t know where everyone else lived, but I quickly used thoughtspeak to tell them, <I live really close by, we can go there.> It was like five blocks, but if anyone thought they’d be closer, they didn’t say so. <Oh, and you guys can use some of my clothes on the way there. I’ll just stay morphed.> I really hoped my awkwardness about my new friends being naked around me, including the girl I had a crush on, didn’t leak into my mental words.

If they did, no one said anything. There weren't enough clothes for everyone but the others could form a meat shield around the naked Sokka to hide him from anyone they might run into on the way to my place. I was perched on Zuko’s shoulder, guiding his way since he was in the lead, but as we started to reach our destination he asked me, “Aang, I think it’s been almost two hours, you should morph back.”

<No, I think I’ve got enough time. Let’s just get to my house and I can change back there!> Soon, we did reach the home in question, and from the lack of lit lights my guardian was asleep for the night. He’d also left a window open, so I could climb in through there, get to the door, and barely manage to open it while still a lemur. <My room is down the hall, on the right,> I told them, letting them go in, grab some clothes, then head to a bathroom and get dressed.

Zuko was the first out, looking really silly in clothes that were my size straining to fit his older, bigger body. He was giving me a hard look, before telling me, “Aang, morph back right now.” Unable to make up any other excuses, I tried morphing back...and didn’t feel myself changing. Had...had I waited too long? A sharp sting of fear went through me, and suddenly my half-hearted effort became a desperate try to turn back to my normal body. Just as I was scared it really wouldn’t happen, I felt my body actually start to change back, and soon I was back to myself, a human once more. Zuko let out a sigh of relief, before I quickly went into my room to get dressed too.

Once I was back out, everyone was there waiting for me. Seeing Katara wearing my clothes caught my attention in a way that I tried not to think about. She looked at me, concerned. “Aang, you should have morphed back sooner. We checked the time while we were changing, and you were only a few minutes away from the time limit.”

For once, I wasn’t imagining that everyone was clearly scrutinizing my actions, they really were. Trying not to look suspicious, all I told them was, “Sorry, I was just so focused on trying to get you guys back here.” They seemed to accept that, and I was able to ask, “So, what happened?” and change the subject.

None of them especially wanted to talk to me about what happened in the Yeerk Pool. From what they did tell me, they hadn’t been able to save anyone. There was some kind of Yeerk technology keeping the people in their cell with a force field, and while they were trying to get whatever special key or card or whatever disabled those barriers, aliens had shown up, but not like the kind we’d seen before. They didn’t want to talk about them much, just calling them small hog monkey things, and apparently the weapons the Controllers had managed to hit Toph, even if it was a glancing blow. We realized then, as we talked around what actually happened in the underground, that we hadn’t thought this through enough.

After all, even if we had gotten those people out, what would they do? Would we tell them who we were? How would they hide from the Yeerks? Would they try to tell the authorities about the invasion? We agreed that, next time we tried something like that, we had to make a better plan to start with.

I was happy we’d focused on that for the rest of our meeting. That way, I didn’t have to keep lying to them. The thing was...I kind of hadn’t wanted to turn back. Being a lemur had been so fun, so freeing, and it wasn’t like I had a lot to come back to at home. I kept putting off the morph because I kind of wanted to stay a lemur. That didn’t happen, but that lingering desire, that yearning to escape my life through morphing, didn’t fade.

It wasn’t going to.

It would be a while before I paid for that longing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flip book animation in the corner for the last quarter of the book: The timer almost reaches zero, but the lemur morphs back into a boy, though he looks sad.
> 
> Next book: The Classmate. New narrator, new antagonist, and new morphs! See you then.


End file.
